Sold as the Alpha King's Breeder
Chapter 1100 - 11 : Conflicting Emotions

Chapter 1100: Chapter 11 : Conflicting Emotions

Rion

My feelings surrounding the young woman I held at knifepoint that night left me more conflicted with myself than anyone I had ever met. As I’d pressed the Crimson Princess up against the wall with a knife to her throat, I had half a mind to murder her.

She had the audacity to strike and wound me, then take off and run like a coward.

There would be hell to pay for that. I wanted her to feel the scourge of my anger and to do so much to her that she would never even consider running away ever again. I wanted her to suffer retribution for it by my hands.

But when I heard her screams, new feelings about her blossomed that were much more tender, a total stranger to those I’d previously had. These new feelings compelled me to be a powerful shield, a hedge of safety for her that she could run and collapse into. I wanted nothing other than to save and protect her at all costs.

Not me, my wolf.

These feelings mingled inside of me at that moment, waging war on me, ripping me up inside. It was all I could do to not scream to release both sets of emotions in two differing, erratic directions. It almost made me want to rip through her.

I had to focus.

I focused on my breathing to calm me down, but still, the murderous rage remained dominant. I couldn’t risk losing her to my baser instincts and blow the entire mission right now. She was bound to run away again in the future–I could count on it until the journey’s end.

I had to make sure she wasn’t going to jeopardize everything I had worked so hard for. I repeated it all in my head, reminding myself that my little sister, Eva, was on the line.

I traded the knife for my hand around her throat. I could feel the erratic jump of her pulse against my fingers and her throat bobbing from swallowing as my palm closed over it. Her eyes shifted around, terrified.

At least I had instilled a sense of fear into her. Maybe she wouldn’t run away so soon the next time, if there was a next time at all. I turned to my men, who had yet to shift back to their human form, and commanded them.

“Leave us.”

I waited for the rest of the crew to walk out of the shack of a house. Their claws scuffed the floorboards as they walked out. Some of their paws dipped into the many pools of blood congealing on the ground, leaving paw prints on the floor.

It was silent after they padded onto the grass outside. No one bothered closing the door that I’d ripped off the hinges. I turned back to the princess, her eyes an unreadable expression.

“You move, you die,” I said.

I slammed the knife into the wall beside her head. She trembled like a leaf and screamed. Tears streamed down her face and dripped off her chin onto her shirt.

I released my hand, figuring she would be too afraid to do anything to me at that point. Her knees buckled and she crumpled to the ground.

She glanced at me, and at my junk, then turned away quickly. In all the excitement, I had forgotten I was naked. I turned around and hurriedly searched for a pair of pants and found some clothes, old but relatively clean in a closet.

“Why do you heal so fast?” she asked when I had on pants.

I ignored her. My gaze prioritized the bodies strewn across the floor. Some of the blood congealed from the wounds, drying on flesh, but it was not the blood that concerned me. As I looked over the bodies, I scouted for the necessities.

Every time my crew and I went through another group of nasties like this, we took what we could from them.

Anything from loose cash to a slice of bread wedged into a back pocket could be useful. On a trip as long as ours, we needed everything we could get. I turned out pockets as I searched the bodies.

Some coins fell out of one of the guy’s pants, but most of them had cash that I then stuffed into my own wallet. Some had rare gems that I took as well. Later, I planned to divide it among the crew.

“I’m not really surprised that you’re stealing from these guys,” she said, almost startling me.

I had forgotten she was there. The pilfering had left me in a routine state of mind.

“You would too if you had to scrape around for all of your basic needs to be met,” I growled, not looking at her, but looking around for more things. “Besides, they’re all dead. It’s not like they’re going to miss it.”

I found more items of use on the other wall. I went to a cabinet toward the back of the room behind a bed and found some food. It wasn’t much, these guys looked like they were overdue for a grocery run.

I rummaged around, took a half-eaten sandwich, and stuffed it into my pocket. After the cabinet, I pilfered through a few more pockets and turned up a couple of knives.

“So that’s what you do? You go to random people’s houses and take their things?” she asked again.

Her voice was hardened and bitter. I tried to ignore the slight guilt pang it caused me.

“Sometimes,” I admitted. “But it’s when we’ve come to a road that dictates we have no other choice.”

“You always have a choice.”

I scoffed. “You’ve clearly never wanted for anything in your life. Even if I’d just met you now, I would have known you were by what you just said.”

She didn’t say anything in turn and it sounded like I had successfully ended the conversation.

I rummaged around some cabinets, finding most of them bare. A good many of them mostly had crumbs that cockroaches fed on. I saw them scattering away when I opened the doors.

Otherwise, there was nothing that wasn’t pickled or fermented, and those provisions were really not that good for my crew. The more weight we had to carry, the more our backs and sides were going to hurt in the long run, so I left the bulky jars where they sat.

As I swept the back wall clean, I came to the other side of the room, closer to where the princess was laying, but I didn’t give her eye contact. My pilfering mind deemed her unnecessary to look at in the present moment, but I noticed a lumpy mass of flesh that I had dug into earlier and gave it a look.

That was where I found the big guy that I had taken a chunk out of in my previous frenzy. When I stormed in earlier he had been holding the princess in his arms. Knowing men like him, men with no honor and their brains in their nether regions, he was probably about to do the unthinkable to her.

I brushed off a bout of oncoming jealousy and hatred for the man, or rather the monster. Not that I wanted to take advantage of the princess. I had no intention of harming her in that way. Yet somehow I still wondered what her willing body would feel like.

I had to focus.

The guy was twice my size, but his face was familiar. I racked my brain for a name, then sighed.

“Brutus,” I snarled, then I turned to the princess, who remained on the floor where she had crumpled. Her posture suggested she was tired, and I didn’t blame her.

“Brutus?” she rose a brow.

I scoffed.

“Brutus is the leader of these ruffians.” I pointed at the bodies to accentuate my point. “These men belong to a nasty guy named Brutus.”

“That guy?” she asked, pointing to the big man.

I shook my head.

“I don’t know who he is, but I recognize him. He and all these people follow Brutus. He’s not here, as far as I know. But we can’t chance running into him. We better get out of this part of the woods tonight.”

I turned away from the bodies and found a dresser. I rifled through it for a spare shirt and a sweater. It would be a cold walk in the woods, and we couldn’t stop now that the princess led us so far out of the way. I pulled on the new clothes and turned for the door, not waiting for her to come along with me.

“Of all the gangs you could have picked to fuck with. Let’s go.”

“No.”

Her obstinance forced me to stop, and I turned to her. She struggled to get back on her feet but stood tall. I stalked back over to her, walking deliberately and slowly as I approached her.

I yanked the knife from the wall. That got her to flinch. She was back in my control again at least, but otherwise her face showed little reaction.

Her expression was the stoniest I had ever seen it. She looked less like a princess and more like a hardened soul. It left me feeling a little uneasy, but I didn’t dare let her know it, knowing that if she found that out, she’d definitely have the upper hand.

“It makes no difference to me if I die here or after you hand me over to whoever you’re dealing with. So, just get it over with.”

I held the knife over her, threatening to plunge it into her chest, but she didn’t so much as budge from her place. She stood still as a statue and was just as unrelenting.

She spoke again, but this time with unwavering conviction. “Nothing you do will make me move.”

Her words left me conflicted again. I tried not to let it show, but what she said had me feeling as though I wanted to protect her and hold her away from the evils of the world. It was clear, she had suffered an experience before my crew and I had come crashing in.

How far the guy went with her was unclear, but I knew I wanted to guard her from the likes of him.

My wolf wanted to guard and protect her, but I needed to save Eva.

Still, the hand holding my knife shook. My conflicted feelings swelled again, giving me little choice on what to really do. But I tried not to do things in the name of pure emotion.

I needed to think about my next steps. But I couldn’t think, not while her eyes stared back into mine with that soulful and challenging look. Those eyes rendered my mind into soup, while igniting all the emotions in my heart, the good and the bad, the feral and the civil.

What was I going to do?